Learning from the Utopian City

Learning from the utopian city GEOGRAPHY School of Global Affairs Faculty of Social Science & Public Policy Conceptualising the Indian city �� 4 Four alternative utopias �� 6 Varanasi: smart heritage city ��6 Chandigarh: paradigm shifts ��8 Nashik: from kumbh city to smart city��12 Navi Mumbai revisited ��16 Varanasi at dusk by Rohit Madan 2 Learning from the utopian city Contents 3 Conceptualising the Indian city Ayona Datta, Anu Sabhlok, William Gould and Rebecca Madgin Indian cities are now more at the centre of debates on urban Register’s Eco-City all provide fertile ground for examining rationalist planning visions that are often out of sync and grassroots organisations. We brought the ideas utopias than ever before. Whether for their entrepreneurial both the imageries, visions and realities of modernist with everyday life at street level. Grassroots visions of utopian histories in conversation with smart urban spirit, modernist planning, contested heritage claims, or ‘smart’ urban planning and the uncritical flow of urban theory of urban futures are not necessarily against the city – futures while at the same time remaining grounded visions, the Indian city has time and again narrated the story of and praxis from the global north to south. In the global they have different visions of urban utopias based on the stakeholder experiences of living and working India’s postcolonial coming of age. The future of the Indian city south, Chandigarh and Brasilia are often cited as the result on citizenship rights, justice and democracy. These in the city. The workshops utilised a range of dynamic is shaped by its own history – where utopian visions of urban of these totalitarian visions that overlooked local contexts visions are shaped by their historic, social and political methods including oral histories, photographs, sketches, planning are continually reassembled by grassroots articulations and produced failed utopias. Yet if anything the recent post engagement with city spaces and urban environments. music, dance, and mental maps to elucidate a range of urban citizenship. Each of these grassroots imaginations of utopian turn towards a global urban age recasts the historical, We call these ‘alternative utopias’. We argue that these of parallel histories and futures. There are not too citizenship can be seen as a vision for a new alternative utopia. cultural, and political legacy of urban utopias in the rhetoric alternative utopias are key to the planning of future cities many forums where academics, policy makers and This international network brought together scholars, policy of crises around urbanisation, migration and climate change. in India, at a time when it stands poised towards a radical grassroots organisations discuss and debate urban issues. makers, planners and civil society members from India and the Utopian urban planning is still discursively, visually and shift to smart urbanism. Our workshops provided that forum and the networks UK to explore alternative histories of the utopian city in India. materially sustained through tropes of heritage cities, eco developed have paved the way for further collaborative cities, smart cities and other politically driven experiments Taking four contrasting cities – Varanasi, Chandigarh, ethnographic work in these cities. with technology in the global north and south. Navi Mumbai and Nashik – this project explored how Alternative utopias alternative utopias to top-down planning visions are The project culminated with a project conference The history of urban planning is a history of urban utopias. Grassroots imaginations of urban futures are often silenced envisioned at the grassroots. The objectives of the project titled ‘Utopian Urban Futures: Histories, imaginations, Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City, Frank Lloyd Wright’s as illegal, illegitimate, dissenting and anti-developmental. were achieved through a series of inter-connected city possibilities’. The conference was organised at Leeds Broadacre City, Le Corbusier’s Radiant City and Richard Yet at the same time, they can radically transform the workshops between scholars, policy makers, planners from 27–28 June 2016. (Un)framing utopias in the urban Photographic ideas in and of the urban, curated by Jitesh Malik and Rohit Madan The ‘blueprint cities’ of architects like Ebenezer Howard and Le Corbusier have received substantial attention by urban researchers, architects, planners and governments. What remains less visible are the imaginations, perceptions and utopian visions of those that inhabit city spaces – as residents, migrants, children, tourists, non-human lives... We put out an open call for photography exploring these themes, and have featured a selection of the photographs we received throughout the pages of this report. In these images we touch upon that liminal space that lies between the abstract and lived. They capture the dialectic between form and process, between built space and lived experience: to examine the histories, imaginations and possibilities of alternative urban utopias. How do the aspirations and dreams of urban residents materialise in space or in what ways do they sneak out amidst the cacophony of bureaucratic, professional and administrative interpretations of space? How does urban space speak to you – revealing your inner imaginations and visions of the city and its experience? What can visual interpretations of the Utopian city unveil that might remain concealed within the written discourse? Unheard narrator by Shilpa Dahake The overlapping layers of painted advertisements and graffiti on the wall and garbage in the front, represents the way it is imagined or (re)produced socially by people who intentionally or unintentionally come in contact with its surface. Uneven, forgotten and ignored such surfaces of walls in cities become a canvas for many of its inhabitants’ expressions� 4 Learning from the utopian city Conceptualising the Indian city 5 Four alternative utopias Varanasi: smart heritage city William Gould, University of Leeds The fame of Varanasi or Banaras as an ancient metropolis, in location of the fortress of the Kashi tribe mentioned perspectives on the idea of the civic space itself: Citizens of been a key focal point for the development of political, many ways, overpowers its mundane urban histories. Diana in the Mahabharata, and capital of the Kashi kingdoms Banaras, recently invited into bids for Smart City status, were social and environmental activism, which was historically Eck suggests that the city of Varanasi may have the world’s discussed in Vedic literature. Myth merges more clearly drawn from all of these sectors as in the past, or from long term rooted not only in its diverse cultural institutions, but also longest history of human habitation, being a key urban centre into narrative of a thriving trading and commercial centre migration of cultivators into the city, floating populations of in movements for ‘social service’ in the late colonial period. at the time of the Mauryan and Gutpa Empires, as well as in the 6th Century BC, at the confluence of the Varuna workers and seasonal labourers. In addition, the city has been This history has allowed the city to spawn a wide range a millennium of Muslim and British domination. It was a and Ganges, dotted with inland pools and lakes and colonies the home for a diverse array of public arts practices, theatre, of arts and environmental NGOs in recent decades, not centre for the development of a range of religious traditions, of ashrams – each adding to the value of the city as a Hindu poetry and music. least those concentrated on sanitation and water supply reform movements, site of Buddha’s first sermon at Sarnath, centre (Eck, 5-25). We can think of Varanasi as the spatial – for example the BHU led Shrishti Sanrakshanam. Such and the location of some of the most important educational framing of cosmological thought across at least two millennia Other visions for the modern city have been driven by movements have started to consider the relationship between institutions of the last two centuries. In many ways it is an – a place that transformed, for example, through humankind’s administrative and commercial elites, and Banaras continues demographic change, the built environment and alternative archetypal ‘mythical city’, shaped and sometimes weighted shift from ritual sacrifice to theism and the rise of more to be high on the list of state and central government notions of heritage. These are rooted in urban realities: down by representations of its past. Deeper historical notions universal notions of god. initiatives around heritage and tourism development. From The city has experienced considerable changes in land use, of the city merge the early Twentieth Century, Varanasi was near the top of the significant slum populations, and a water supply system that with its utopian The city as ancient religious

Load more